


GEORGETOWN, MY HOME — or, THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: MAGIC AMNESIA TIME

by leepepper



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: Academia, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Amnesia, Autism, Coma, Cooking, Deaf Character, Developing Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Flashbacks, Food Porn, Gen, Intimacy, Jewish Character, Metafiction, Multi, Muslim Character, Native American Character(s), Nonbinary Character, Open Relationships, Other, Past Relationship(s), Performing Arts, Recreational Drug Use, Slice of Life, Theatre, Tongue-in-cheek, Washington D.C.
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-06
Updated: 2021-01-06
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:33:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28083225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leepepper/pseuds/leepepper
Summary: Link Jepson was just graduating from Georgetown University when the accident changed their life forever. Stuck in a coma for seven years, they finally come to after what seems like a century of hibernation with no memories and no knowledge of their identity. It seems that they have friends to help them piece their life back together, though - otherwise known as the Georgetown Champions, their old theatre troupe back from their undergraduate days. With the loves of their life minus one and plus another, they will learn how to cope and live in this strange new world full of old friends and new.
Relationships: Daruk & Link & Mipha & Revali & Urbosa & Zelda (Legend of Zelda), Link/Mipha (Legend of Zelda), Link/Prince Sidon, Link/Zelda (Legend of Zelda)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 9





	GEORGETOWN, MY HOME — or, THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: MAGIC AMNESIA TIME

**Author's Note:**

> the premise of this story came to me wayyy before i was ever a zelda fan in earnest, but then christmastime came and i was consumed with the desire to play breath of the wild, ocarina of time, twilight princess, and anything else i could get my hands on. i'm not an experienced or super knowledgeable zelda fan, and maybe that shows in the story, but i hope this touches someone. i put my all into it. :o)
> 
> please please please point out if i slip up on link's pronouns somewhere. they are a they/them (as am i for that matter), but sometimes my dumb cissexist brain spits out a he/him and i don't manage to catch it.

#  _ 1 _

Link Jepson comes out of their coma on February 2nd, 2021. They have been in a coma for nearly seven years, through which the world has changed in immeasurable, kind of sci-fi/dystopian/extraterrestrial ways. They reawaken slow. It is nearly impossible to describe. The brain sleeps in parts, and unconsciousness is simply defined as an inability to respond to outside stimuli, which, when prolonged, is called a coma. That’s what they are waking from. These are the bits and pieces.

Link sees lights, always low but distinctly fluorescent. They can’t focus on them for too long before the exercise grows tiring and they are back under in the black and blue of near-braindeath. An hour later, they are pulling at the tube in their mouth and gagging and trying to make noise, and it’s about three minutes of this before a nurse passes by Link’s hospital room and notices all the commotion and comes to them with alarm all over her pretty brown face.

“Oh, Lord!” she says, taking their feeble hands and pulling them away from the tube going down their throat. “You don’t want to do that now, baby. That’s how you’ve been eatin’ for the past seven years.”

Seven years? _ Eating? _ Link doesn’t even know where they are, let alone what they’ve been doing eating out of a tube.

There are a lot of questions. Doctors and nurses coming in and out to shine lights in their eyes and evaluate their level of consciousness, see where they’re at on the Glasgow coma scale. Where they used to be firmly three, they are now at thirteen rising to fourteen. “What is your name?!” a dorky sort of nurse asks them while a doctor gently pounds their knee with a mallet. 

“Link…” Link mumbles around a mouth full of gauze, cobwebs, ancient spiders. “Link Jepson.”

“Where are you?!”

“Vermont… Montpelier?”

The nurse looks worryingly at the doctor, who taps Link’s other knee and jots something down on a clipboard. It is all so confusing.

Link falls in and out of sleep. Were they sleeping for seven years? For fifty? For one-hundred? During wakefulness, they search around in the fog of their long-term memory bank for something, anything to tether onto, but they can only recall the fenced-in backyard back home and Mom’s death due to pneumococcal pneumonia when they were seven, Dad’s lined face and his dirty blond hair and the little kitten he brought home after Mom died, a calico baby with a belly fat with milk. Eventually, the nurses rouse Link enough to put a bowl of chicken broth and a high-calorie multi-fruit juice in front of them, and while Link familiarizes themself with the motions of spooning soup into their mouth, Jean the nurse asks them questions about how they’re feeling.

“How is your vision? Can you see clearly?”

“What?” Link has been having so much trouble hearing since they woke up. They can barely hear themself speak.

“How do you see?! How many fingers?!”

Link plainly observed three fingers, so they said, “Three.” Jean scribbled this down, then helped Link get a straw in their mouth. Close to Link’s head, Jean spoke.

“Your hearing isn’t so good, is it? Dr. Miyamoto will want to have that tested.”

“What happened?” Link asks, trying to project the immensity of their confusion. “Me?” they ask, pointing to themself, to the soup, to the room. “What happened to me?”

Jean frowns, shaking her head and leaning in close to speak into Link’s ear. “Ask Dr. Miyamoto. I just started working here two weeks ago.”

Eventually, they do tell them what in the actual fuck is going on.

They are not, in fact, in Montpelier, Vermont circa 2000. They are in the capital of this great country, America, in 2021. So many times, they ask, “Why?”and “How?” and “Really?” and Miyamoto has to consult his clipboard full of notes on Link Jepson and then say, “You moved to D.C. to go to college! Georgetown! English writing - I’ve heard you were quite good! Yes, you did graduate before the accident!”

Then, Link is asking in a loud and slurring voice, “Dad? Where is Dad?”

Miyamoto frowns into his clipboard. “Dead, I’m afraid! You have a Zelda Silverstein as your in-case-of-emergency contact! She’s coming to see you today!”

And, well. Link doesn’t know anything about that. 

Link reads the doctor’s notes themself when Miyamoto tires of screaming. The nurses give Link a pad on which to write questions back.

  
  


> _ May 2014 / Link jepson comes into icu with traumatic brain injury due to automobile crash  
>  _ _ crash head-on with vehicle, unresponsive at the scene  
>  _ _ other party unknown, car linked to theatre professor at georgetown _
> 
> _ link jepson unresponsive to external stimuli - GCS 3  
>  _ _ CT indicates cerebral hemorrhage  
>  _ _ put on emergency life support [unintelligible] propofol [unintelligible]  _

  
  


_ was i driving _ , Link asks.

Miyamoto shakes his head apologetically, scribbling down,  _ You were on a bicycle _ .

_ did i die? _

Miyamoto shakes his head again, this time with a smile.  _ U R very lucky!  _ and a silly smiley face. 

The nurses try to get Link to eat more. They have not swallowed actual food in so long, so every step in the direction of solid food is nauseating. Today, the nurses simply make them eat applesauce and drink cool, crisp water meant to soothe the sandpaper scratch of their throat, and then Jean and Beedle turn the lights down as low as possible and let Link doze some more, them still so tired even after seven years of Rip Van Winklian sleep. 

The next time Link wakes, it is to Zelda standing by their bed, crying, her face all red and puffy. Later, Link will be told by some nurse about how funny and cool it is that Link’s in-case-of-emergency-person (friend, girlfriend, partner? whatever) is named Zelda, because of those Japanese video games everyone started playing in the eighties with the warrior child named Link and the Princess named Zelda, his perpetual friend and savior. Link thinks that maybe they would have liked a video game like this back in their other life, but right now, all they are concerned with is the way Zelda looks at them like she might bubble up into nothing but water and wash away, that’s how full up with tears she is. Link watches Zelda write out her name and a note to them on the pad the nurses gave them.

_ Zelda Silverstein - Do you remember me? _

Link frowns so hard they feel their face might come off.

_ no i’m sorry _ .

Zelda’s expression isn’t surprised, but she does look mighty sad. 

She tells them who she is. A classmate from Georgetown who Link lived with when they graduated, an actress and a teacher and a writer and an academic. Link can’t imagine a person like them - dirt poor from the slums and the burbs of Montpelier, with slush and mud on their boots and grandmother’s antique earrings in their ears - ever being in the proximity of a person as put-together and beautiful as Zelda is, even as she is breathtakingly sad. They suddenly know what it is to be loved by a person they do not know at all.

_ video game?? _ Link asks.

Zelda looks at this note with a somewhat confused expression, then laughs. She looks so much more beautiful when she laughs than when she cries, and this makes Link feel slightly more at ease.

_ I’ll show you later I promise _ , she jots back. Link supposes this makes them feel better as well. 

Miyamoto keeps them at the hospital for a few days, acclimating Link to a more substantial diet and testing their basic faculties and vitals. Zelda visits at the end of every day to practice her penmanship and write notes back and forth with Link. Mostly Link simply aches to go outside, as they do not remember outside at all, so when they finally leave Georgetown University Hospital on February 7th - when they are finally afforded the privilege to look upon trees, grass, and sky and feel the crisp winter air - they are breathless with delight. They wear Goodwill clothes picked out of their old college closet - a heavy green jacket Zelda preserved for them for all the years she hoped they would wake up, sweatpants that have grown baggy on their now-thin frame, their long dishwater blond hair ponytailed. The sun is high and the sky is the crystal, pale blue of the early year. It is the first day of Link’s life. 

Zelda lives in a one-bedroom flat above a small café called LOVE in a neighborhood of D.C. called Shaw, which is a whole lot of information that Link doesn’t quite take in all at once though Zelda assures them that they will soon enough. She has pretty floor-to-ceiling windows and warm hardwood floors in her flat, and Zelda shows them the fold-out couch and the bookshelves full of so many academic tomes and novels and picture books and encyclopedias. On the way home, Link’s stomach gurgled and they became overtaken with a look of utter sheepishness; Zelda just smiled, waved her hand dismissively in the air, and said, “I’ll buy you a sandwich from Prego Again. You used to like that place a lot. Pesto and tomato paninis, yeah?”

Now, Link slowly munches on their sandwich and swims in a delicate, dangerous, buttery sea of delicious flavors and new/old friendship. Zelda is trying to show them everything in her house just in case they need it, and they are just eating the best first sandwich they’ve ever had in their life. 

“Here’s the thermostat,” Zelda says in a loud voice so Link can hear, showing them the thermostat. “I usually keep it in the seventies during the winter, but if you like it a little chillier, I’ll just put on sweaters in the house. Here’s the refrigerator. I don’t have that much in here right now and I’m kosher so you might not find everything you want, but we can go grocery shopping soon and talk about everything you want to or used to eat. Here’s the linen closet, and the bathroom. I like really soft towels so you can use literally any of these, and the hamper is right there for your dirty clothes and your linens. Here’s my bedroom-slash-office, where I spend most of my time. I’m at work in my office on campus most days, but when I come home I spend a lot of time in my little room here, just because it’s easy and safe. You can always come bother me, if you need anything - anything at all.”

By now, Link has finished their sandwich and mostly slurped down the watermelon lemonade Zelda had bought for them as well. Their stomach - shrunk to the size of a tennis ball over seven years of eating through a tube - is full and a little unhappy. Zelda lets them look all over her house, lets them dig through the suitcase full of clothes Zelda kept for them from when they were in college - old T-shirts for musical acts from the 70s, holey jeans, mismatched socks, knit beanies. Eventually, they sit down on the living room couch that is now their bed, and Zelda brings them a six-inch rectangle of Gorilla Glass and LED sensors and tells them, “This is your phone. I got you a new one because everyone needs one in their twenty-first century life. It’s even crazier now than it was when the accident happened.”

Link examines their phone, its slick full-screen display and nondescript side-buttons for volume and power. They have one contact - Zelda Silverstein, already made with a professional portrait photograph from Zelda’s Georgetown faculty page.  _ She’s conscientious _ , Link thinks, storing this fact about their only friend and lifeline in the blank cupboard of their brain. Zelda is watching them, fiddling with the sleeves of her dark blue sweater, nervous and pinched in her face. Link nods and says, “Thank you,” as clearly as they can. 

Zelda looks as though she may start to say something, then thinks better of it and pulls her own phone out of her pocket. Link watches her mess with her phone for a moment, then is abruptly brought out of it by their own phone vibrating in their hands.

  
  


> **Zelda Silverstein  
>  ** I can text you lots of pictures and videos from years ago if you want me to, and we can talk like this for the time being if you want.
> 
> **Link Jepson  
>  ** okay yes that’s a good idea
> 
> thank you for everything

  
  


Zelda smiles at Link - a perfect, sad crescent moon pulling itself across her face. She leaves them alone, to wander around the house and take a short nap and later, around dinnertime, install apps on their phone from the Play Store. What tools will Link need in their new life?  _ Definitely a music app _ , they think to themself as they find and install Spotify, and a notepad, and Wikipedia. Idly, they wonder about headphones and text Zelda asking after them; two minutes later, she comes out of her bedroom with a pair and drops them into their hands with another one of her Mona Lisa smiles.

The phone and the headphones become the cornerstone of Link’s life. Though COVID is still rampant despite the growing availability of the vaccine, Zelda gets up at 7:30 every morning to make breakfast, drink coffee, and bustle off to her office at Georgetown, leaving Link all alone with their phone and strict instructions to text if anything goes wrong. For the first week, Link simply explores Zelda’s apartment in-depth, tackling one room at a time. They click through Zelda’s Netflix, Hulu, and HBO watch history, finding mostly romantic comedies from the 80s and 90s ( _ The Princess Bride _ ,  _ When Harry Met Sally _ ,  _ Moonstruck _ , Meryl Streep’s instantly recognizable face, though Link isn’t sure where they recognize her from). They peruse Zelda’s record collection, musicians called Talking Heads and Broken Social Scene and Fiona Apple and Billie Holiday. They look at the books on Zelda’s various bookshelves and go through the big  _ World Books _ with glossy photographs of marine wildlife and Maasai warriors and Malagasy ring-tailed lemurs and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. It is utterly dizzying to wake up to a world that is only halfway understandable, halfway translatable into a language that Link understands.

They retained their semantic and procedural memories, see. Link knows how to tie their shoes and read a map and make a peanut butter, jelly, and banana sandwich. What they don’t have is long stretches of videotape in their mind, the black tape cut away and crumpled up in the back of their brain, undiscoverable and unknowable. They Google  _ who is the president of the united states _ and are presented with a picture of a garden variety old white man that they have never seen before and somehow have seen so many times in so many history books from their old Montpelier childhood. Link frowns, and moves onto the kitchen.

Zelda is Jewish (a Reform Jew, she specifies when Link asks, though this should technically make her less strict about her diet), so she has a kosher kitchen. Two sinks, two refrigerators. Link wonders how in the world Zelda could afford a place like this in Washington, D.C., and tries to find a polite way to ask this.

  
  


> **Link Jepson  
>  ** are you… um… rich?
> 
> **Zelda Silverstein  
>  ** Haha, I’m trying to imagine why you might be asking that. It’s the two refrigerators, isn’t it?
> 
> My father has been the senator from Vermont since 2004 and that comes with all its understandable financial perks. I’m not exaggerating or being naive when I say that he’s the most honest senator of the whole lot of them, but we come from a family of hard workers and that has paid off over the generations since we first came here from Austria-Hungary.
> 
> Blah blah blah, I’m talking too much aren’t I? Yes, I’m “rich”, please don’t judge me for that.

  
  


Link smiles at their phone, tickled. They would love nothing more than for Zelda to talk more at length about just about anything.

Organic milk, eggs, yogurt in one fridge, cuts of beef and goat and lamb in the other. Zelda likes to eat Honey-Nut Cheerios, which Link supposes is kind of cute -  _ does she have a sweet tooth? _ There is sea salt chocolate in a shiny blue bag on top of the microwave, so yeah, it seems that she does. Link aches for an apple, so they grab one and a banana from the fruit bowl and slice each fruit up with a knife they find in the drawer next to the dairy fridge. They eat at the breakfast bar and stare out of the big windows in the living room, out into winter in D.C. - evergreen trees and pedestrians in pea coats. 

Link feels strange venturing into Zelda’s bedroom. They ask Zelda beforehand if it's okay to take a look, and after thirty minutes of pure anticipatory hell, Zelda replies with a breezy  _ Of course! I have no secrets _ . Zelda’s winter comforter is a great cerulean quilt with geometric patterns embroidered across it, and Link wonders at the special blue, whether this is Zelda’s favorite color (it’s everywhere in her wardrobe and living quarters). Zelda’s desk is conspicuously clean, with a vase of slightly wilted lilies and a small, squat table lamp on it. Zelda’s nightstand is full of books and notepads and pens,  _ A Holocaust Reader _ and  _ A Palace of Pearls _ and a small green steno pad and purple Sticky Notes full of Zelda’s lilting handwriting. Link thinks so hard at all of this, at Zelda’s fuzzy slippers and the tabby orange cat purring around Link’s ankles and the big gold earrings on the dresser and framed photographs of Zelda with a grand, stout older man with a white beard and his arms around her like she’s his, of Zelda with Link themself, smiling and holding their hand -  _ aah _ , they think at this until their head hurts. 

Who is Zelda? Who are they? They look up Billie Holiday on Spotify, put their headphones in, and float away on honey-and-champagne bubbles, curled in the middle of Zelda’s bed, the rain falling down in slow drizzles outside.

Week two of Link’s new life. The cat is named Princess, and he is Link’s new best friend. With the aid of a harness and leash, Princess leads Link all over the neighborhood, down tree-lined streets and perfect sidewalks, into cafés and grocery stores, in the snow and the rain. Given free reign to ignore others and indulge in their partial deafness with the aid of their headphones, Link photographs crispy winter leaves and Corgis on leashes, pomegranates in the Safeway, their own face sometimes posed next to a very pretty orchid flower. On the second Friday in February, Zelda and Link pile into Zelda’s white BMW and to grocery shopping for dinner and whatever Link thinks they might eat during the day; Link eats like a scavenger, taking what they can get and being thankful regardless of the meal’s quality, so they spend the trip saying yes to everything Zelda offers them: sandwich meat and artichoke and avocado and chicken breasts, yogurt with strawberries in it and eggplant and mozzarella cheese and whitefish fillets. 

Eventually, Zelda realizes what’s happening. She looks at Link with narrowed eyes.

“You’d eat a worm if I put it in the basket,” she comments. When Link looks sheepish, she shakes her head and laughs and pushes the basket in the direction of the bakery. 

Link photographs Zelda in the bakery. She is distracted by the decadence, looking at petitfours and turtle cheesecakes and brownies bedazzled with huge white chocolate chunks. Her blonde hair is braided and tucked out of her face, yellowy like the daisies on her medical mask in the fluorescent overhead light of the supermarket. As she picks out a fruitcake ( _ for what occasion _ , Link jots on the grocery list, and Zelda just shrugs at them and grins), Link snaps pictures of her outstretched finger, her telling the baker, “Thank you.”

In the checkout line, Zelda texts Link.

  
  


> **Zelda Silverstein  
>  ** Why so many pictures?
> 
> **Link Jepson  
>  ** idk in case i forget everything again i’ll remember it better next time

  
  


Zelda gives him a deeply bothered look, then seems to realize what her face is doing and laughs, pulling her mask down over her face.

  
  


> **Zelda Silverstein  
>  ** Take a picture of us!

  
  


Link snaps a selfie of the two of them with their front camera and makes this Zelda’s contact photo in lieu of the pretty but overly professional picture attached to her contact before. They ride home with the groceries and walk them up the stairs to Zelda’s flat, to put them away in her neat kosher kitchen.

“I suppose I’ll send you all your stories,” Zelda mumbles as she and Link store the sandwich fixings and the yogurt in the refrigerators. Link makes an expression of confusion; she puts her face close to theirs and repeats it: “Your stories. You used to write all the time. I’ll send you what you worked on in college and some of the stuff you showed me from before.”

Link reads adventure tales of fairy men, warrior princesses, noble steeds, wild wolfmen. They are dated all the way back from 2006, and they follow strange formulas and an internal logic that seems consistent throughout each tale, as if they are all from the same sprawling universe. At night, Link plays games on their phone and scrolls through their pictures, their stories, and the photographs and videos Zelda has sent them during the day of their time at Georgetown as a fatter, blonder writer-cum-theatre kid. Link wonders at the people in every pic and vid, at Zelda and other beautiful ladies and tall, striking men that Zelda refers to as “The Georgetown Champions” on notepad and via text - “Our old theatre buddies.”

On Thursday, February 18th, the Georgetown Champions minus one come over to welcome Link back into the world. Zelda makes shakshuka for dinner, cracking eggs into tomatoes with sauteed onions, bell peppers, and garlic. Link hovers over her shoulder as she cooks, watching her season and cover and stir and check the dish periodically. Sweet aromas fill the kitchen; Zelda makes a starbursting, fingers-grasping gesture with her right hand as if to say, “ _ Yes! Now! _ ” and smiles when Link automatically goes to get plates out of the cabinet.

Revali Santiago, a Portuguese-Hawaiian actor-cum-playwright with long, feathery hair and a honker of a nose, is the first to arrive for dinner, smelling like Chanel no. 5 and swaddled in a colorful infinity scarf. He looks at Link for a long time - at their uncut hair, them borderline scrawny yet six feet tall - and then says to Zelda, where Link can’t hear, “They’re not the same.”

Frowning at Revali, Zelda takes his coat and hangs it on the tree next to the door. “Hush,” she says. “Be thankful they’re here now.” When Revali doesn’t so much as say hi to Link as he passes into the kitchen, simply scrutinizing them with his big blue eyes, she writes the letters  _ A S S H O L E  _ into the air for Link’s benefit. Link laughs a little into their hand.

Then there is Urbosa Bennani, a statuesque Moroccan with her russet hair piled on top of her head. She puts her hands on Link’s shoulders, her towering over Link even at their height, and says in a firm and clear voice, “Welcome back. My name is Urbosa.”

Link, feeling awed in the presence of such a large and gracious woman, nods and smiles and doesn’t say anything. How could they do or say anything that would make sense to these people?

The last to arrive is the massive and most kind Daruk Guzmán - a mountain of a man who takes Link immediately into his bearish arms and speaks in a deep baritone that is easy for them to hear. He talks to Link for an hour and a half over steadily cooling shakshuka about a time a decade ago when they were all actors in the Washington, D.C. university theatre scene and Link was a dramaturge, d-r-a-m-a-t-u-r-g-e, who researched and notated and produced all of their productions. 

“Remember  _ Midsummer _ ?” Daruk asks the room in general, sitting with Link on the sofa while the rest of the Champions perch and recline on the armchairs and breakfast bar stools. A hum of assent that Link can’t quite hear reverberates through the room; Zelda nods and makes squiggly motions with her hands. “That was my favorite time.”

“ _ Angels in America _ was the superior production,” Revali argues (Link is grateful that his voice is just loud).

“Yes, but  _ Midsummer  _ was more enjoyable,” Daruk shoots back easily. “Zelda as our Hermia, Urbosa as Titania, Link the Robin Goodfellow, Mipha as Helena - we really learned one another at that time, and we all had so much fun.”

“Show pictures!” Zelda cries out, already, pulling out her phone to find some. Daruk has brought with him a big wooden box of photographs taken with disposables, Polaroids, and an old Nikon that takes 35 mm film. The Champions crowd around and pass around pictures of them all more than ten years younger, in stage makeup and costumes made of silk, polyester, gossamer, and tulle; over and over, Link sees a brown smiling face in these photographs, a face invariably framed by bright red hijabs, a face so beautiful and unfamiliar to them, though the Champions pass her around with ease.

“Who is this?” Link asks Zelda, handing her a picture of the smiling woman in a sparkling scarlet hijab, holding tulips in her hands. Zelda’s face is bright when she takes the photo; looking upon it with contemplative, deeply green eyes, she makes a soft noise in the back of her throat that Link doesn’t pick up on.

“Mipha!” Zelda says, holding the picture in the air as if it is sacred. Suddenly, she looks as though she might cry. “This is Mipha. She was our best friend.”

“A good actress!” Daruk exclaims.

“A wonderful friend!” Urbosa adds, then - leaning in to speak into Link’s ear - “And very, very much in love with you.” 

Link looks for a long time at Mipha’s Arabic face - her large dark eyes, her strong nose. After the Champions leave, Link helps Zelda wash the dishes and goes to bed thinking about Mipha, wondering at her acting chops and what happened to her. Zelda briefly mentioned her dying before graduation - “I don’t like to talk about it, but it was a car accident,” she uttered in a low voice when Link asked, then turned away and touched the ends of her braided hair in a way that clearly communicated her anxiety and her sorrow - and this, Link thinks about with great sadness in the pit of them. There’s no way they could know this person who loved them so now that she’s gone, and why did she love Link so much? What was she like, aside from being a great actress and friend? Link finds a singular star outside the window from where they lie on Zelda’s fold-out, breathing hard in the chill of the February night.  _ Mipha, Mipha, Mipha _ \- they count her name like sheep until sleep comes.

The next morning, Link walks out onto the fire escape in their sweatpants, sweater, and socks and breathes in the cold winter air. Formless, grainy memories of Mom and Dad in Montpelier flit through their mind - Mom’s long, Abenaki hair in twin plaits down the back of her head, and her reading Sendak to Link for bedtime, and her strange, horrific cough at the end of her life, before she disappeared into the hole in the ground when Link was six. Dad carrying Link across the house piggyback, his calloused and weather-worn hands from years of hard labor, his bashful gap-toothed smile, and the way he always poked his head out of windows and doors looking for Link wherever they roamed, in the backyard or the kitchen or just in their bedroom, as adventurous a child as Link always was. Link looks out over their little stretch of Washington, D.C. and sort of frowns at having ended up here so far from home, so far from anything they remember. How did they end up with this life? As far as they knew, back when they were their Mother’s child in Elm Street and Stonewall Meadows in Montpelier, they’d live in Vermont and die in Vermont - it was all they had been allotted in the cosmic lottery.

Link thinks of themselves, too. Them as a weird, questionably autistic kid, fashioning walking staves and swords out of tree branches and wandering through the neighborhoods, backwoods, and alleyways, always looking for cool rocks or pretty lizards and mixing potions out of whatever liquid materials they could find. Link used to bring spiders home instead of puppy dogs. They used to carve their initials into drying concrete just to fuck with the city. They used to climb trees to converse with pigeons and crows, and they came home each day at seven o’clock with their pockets full of strange junk and a head full of Montpelier’s noise. They suppose it’s been an immeasurably long time since their wandering years of childhood (according to Zelda, Link will be twenty-nine in June), though they truthfully don’t feel much older than thirteen, if they feel any age at all. Going back inside, they find Zelda in the kitchen, making coffee with the percolator that she likes to call “cute.” Zelda smiles at them, and Link gives her a small nod of acknowledgement in reply.

In March, Link starts to learn sign language. Zelda buys them both a workbook to teach themselves out of and they practice every morning over breakfast and every night over dinner. During the day, Link roams around the trendy, hip neighborhood of Shaw and into Columbia Heights with a little notebook in their hand, popping into bars like Solly’s and El Techo to munch on fish tacos, drink Budweiser, and pet people’s dogs. They write out notes to the bartenders and the bystanders, stuff like  _ thank you _ and  _ i’m deaf _ whenever they have to explain themselves. As the weather grows warmer, Link trades leather and wool scarves for sweaters and denim that they’ve dug out of their sparse college wardrobe. They swim in their clothes, thirty pounds lighter than they were years ago, and when Zelda comes home from class at six o’clock with exhausted eyes and looks at Link in a sweatshirt that seems two sizes two big, she says, half-signing it, “We have to fatten you up.”

_ OK _ , Link signs back.

At night, Zelda grades papers, or does whatever she does as an adjunct professor. Link supposes that most of it is papers, as that’s what Zelda tells them when they come to linger at her bedroom door, asking where the toilet tissue is. For an hour, give or take, Zelda grades papers at her desk with a tense line in her shoulders and a tight twistiness to her mouth that looks uncomfortable when Link glimpses it for a moment. School is entirely virtual at this point, but Zelda - an “old-fashioned paper fiend” as she explains to Link - has printed out all of her students’ work to grade by hand with a red ballpoint pen.  _ Cute _ , Link thinks, going back to the bathroom to replace the roll they’ve just depleted.

Afterward, they cook. Since coming back to life, Link has added a bunch of cooking and recipe apps to their phone’s repertoire (their toolkit for their new existence). They search up recipes for potato croquettes and lemon pepper fish, Korean fried chicken and pasta aglio, olio e peperoncino, and while they and Zelda cook, they learn each other, and Link learns themself. 

Mashing potatoes for the croquettes: Link signs,  _ tell me about your family _ .

“Oy,  _ really? _ ” Zelda says. She’s getting the rest of the ingredients for the croquettes out of the dairy refrigerator and the cabinet: cheddar cheese that she will slice into cubes, two eggs, breadcrumbs. “Do you really want to know?”

Link could say so much, but settles with a simple nod.

Zelda puts all of the ingredients down on the island/breakfast bar. She visibly ponders where to start. “I look just like my grandmother,” she says/signs, then mouths, “Spitting image,” to Link so that they get the picture. “My grandmother’s family is from Austria-Hungary in present-day Hungary. They escaped the Holocaust in 1939, and my father was born in New York in 1941. He was the first baby born in the U.S.A.” Zelda accentuates all of her signing with evocative expressions and long, drawn-out pronunciations; after this short spiel, she looks at Link, leans in, and asks, “Are you following me?”

Link, who has started to lip-read a bit, nods again and signs,  _ go on _ .

Zelda smiles and does as she is told. As she and Link form the croquettes; roll them in flour, egg, and breadcrumbs; and fry them in vegetable oil, she tells Link about her father, Rhoam Bosphoramus Silverstein the senator from Vermont, her big argumentative daddy who fights for the underprivileged and to her is almost like a king. “He liked you,” Zelda tells Link as they spoon potatoes out of the frying pot, her eyes going crinkly with affection at the corners. “He thought you were ‘husband material.’”

Link shakes their head, wondering what in the world that means. 

The next day, placing squares of butter and slices of lemon on seasoned fish in a ceramic skillet: Link signs,  _ your mother? _

Zelda’s eyes get big, and for a moment, Link is terrified that she will cry. Roasting brussel sprouts and garlic in another skillet, Zelda turns to her task and searches each green sprout as if they hold the answer to Link’s exceptionally broad question. Link realizes before she even says it that she, like them, is an orphan. 

“My mother died when I was young,” Zelda says, then - before Link can say something like  _ mine too _ \- nods at them and adds, “Like yours. She loved to read and write, so I wanted to do that too when I grew up. That’s why I teach literature now. Daddy doesn’t like that.”

Link’s brow furrows as they open the oven and slip the fish inside with one mittened hand.  _ Y? _ , they sign.

Zelda laughs, loud enough so that Link can hear. She has a beautiful laugh, melodic like a wind-chime. She looks kind of like a ballet dancer, standing at the oven in a  _ cou de pied _ , gently agitating the brussel sprouts with a wooden spoon. “Daddy is a politician. He wants me to be a politician like him, but I…” She trails off with her hands in the air, frowning at the ceiling. Eventually, she simply shakes her head and shrugs, and Link thinks without knowing that they understand what she means.

On the second Friday of the month, lifting marinated chicken wings into flour and then into the frying pot:  _ why teaching _ , Link signs.

Zelda stirs the chicken in the popping oil with a silver slotted spoon. As she often does when she’s thinking about the answer to one of Link’s questions, she looks sad, sort of torn up inside. “Have you ever heard it - those who can’t do, teach and those who can teach, do?” When Link shakes their head, she smiles a tragic smile. “I’m better at teaching literature than making it myself. I’ve written two books and am in the middle of number three, but teaching is better for me. Teaching is what I’m good at.”

Link watches the chicken fry, the little floured wings slowly going golden-brown. They sign, asking aloud at the same time, “What is your class called?”

Zelda rolls her eyes. “Introduction to Ancient and Contemporary Jewish Literature. Boring stuff.”

Link shakes their head. _ Will u teach me? _

Zelda’s responding smile is incredibly sweet. “Of course - maybe this summer.”

On Sunday, as they stir in linguine pasta with peperoncini, garlic, and parsley:  _ how did we meet _ , Link signs.

Zelda looks at Link strangely at this question, as if there is something on their face. “The quick version or the long version?” she asks.

_ Either _ , Link signs.

The pasta steams on the stove, the dish complete, ready for serving. Zelda gets the green plates out of the cabinet and does Link the favor of serving both of them. Once they’re sitting down at the breakfast bar, blowing the steam off of their plates, Zelda starts to talk and sign, her face fixed with concentration as it always is when she’s trying to tell Link something important (which, incidentally, she almost always is).

“We were eighteen,” she says, facing Link as they shovel forkfuls of peppery pasta into their mouth. “Freshmen. We were in a Writing About Texts class. I thought you hated me.”

Link fights the urge to laugh, unable to imagine hating a person like Zelda.  _ Y? _ , they sign.

“You just…” Zelda trails off, then fixes Link with an intense, vile stare, her green eyes boring holes into their hazel. Just when Link starts to grow uncomfortable beneath the force of such a stare, Zelda breaks off with a giggle, saying, “You stared at me like that. Like I had hurt you. Turns out you just had a crush on me.”

Link imagines this, imagines themself - eighteen and despicably odd. They cannot stay their smile, even as they attempt to wrestle their munching mouth into submission.

“We lived in the same dorm,” Zelda continues between bites of pasta. “We used to walk to the park and do homework together. You didn’t talk much then either.”

_ Sorry _ , Link signs. Zelda shakes her head.

“You’re fine.” She smiles with her eyes. “I really don’t mind.”

After dinner, Link and Zelda sit without communicating in the living room, sort of watching television and sort of not, pulled into their own separate corners. With her journal (or, as she fancifully calls it in her head, her diary) propped up in her lap, Zelda writes out the day’s thoughts with her favorite faux-quill pen.

  
  


> _ March 14, 2021 _
> 
> _ I had lunch at the Georgetown Gourmet place just off campus today. There were so many tired young women there, working there behind the counter and on their laptops at the little tables everywhere, checking their cellphones and sleepwalking through their little tasks. I suppose I was one of those tired young women (though am I young anymore? I’m about to be in my thirties, hmph), though I hope my eyes weren’t nearly as sad and hollow as some of the other ladies’ were. DC is a difficult, impossible place to live and it is a city of hardworking, sleep-deprived, beautiful and strong-willed and kind of vicious individuals - at least that’s been my perception of it. It’s as if the last time we all slept, it was exactly a year ago, before COVID and before the whole world flipped upside down. It’s nearly impossible to put into words how much everything has changed. _
> 
> _ I wish I could explain to Link how everything has changed. I suppose they have no concept of change or the world being different, considering their amnesia, but… I wish I could explain to them the way things were before, when we were in college and everything seemed so much more serious than it ever was (so much more serious than things eventually became, than they are now). They like the face masks I bought for them after they woke up. They don’t mind using hand sanitizer or washing their hands or social distancing. They seem to have it much easier and much harder than the rest of the world, just in terms of adjusting to it all. Sometimes I wish it was me that had gone to sleep for seven years and woken up after the calamity had well and truly come to pass. _
> 
> _ Oh, Link. What a strange, new and old friend. I never doubted for a minute that they’d eventually come back to life, and I can’t help but think that they had the best timing. Can you, dear diary, imagine what it would have been like if they had woken up a year earlier when COVID had first come onto the scene and we were all scared and confused and had no idea what was going on? I shudder to think. They are so very different and so very much the same. I find myself acting the same way I did when we first met, when I was so nervous and sad every time I had to speak with them, only now it’s all the time!! They live with me!! I wouldn’t have them be anywhere else (they have nowhere else to go), but it’s like having a stranger and divorced spouse in the house to have them here. All the history between us, and they have no scrap of it. _
> 
> _ I miss Daddy. I think I should give him a call very soon; ever since the end of the campaign last year, he’s become so reclusive. I wonder what he will say about this new Link. I do hope he approves of them; I plan to keep them around for as long as they plan to stay. _

  
  


The next day, Zelda goes to Georgetown. It is the first day of midterms, and all of Zelda’s students are busy typing away at their essay questions and multiple choice quizzes on Blackboard while Zelda hobnobs with her superiors and drinks coffee at her desk at work. Somewhere near noon, Zelda’s phone chimes at her and she pounces on it, thinking (hoping) that the missive might be from Link. She is only slightly disappointed to see that it’s Paya, an old classmate from undergraduate school and the granddaughter of the English chair at Georgetown.

  
  


> **Paya Shapiro  
>  ** Zelda!! aah! can i pester you for a moment?
> 
> **Zelda Silverstein  
>  ** Of course, what’s up?
> 
> **Paya Shapiro  
>  ** I have no idea what i’m doing [worried face emoji] i’m thinking about dropping out and moving to Argentina? but then i’d never hear the end of it from my bubbe

  
  


Zelda laughs out loud at her phone, openly amused by this. Two years ago, she was in Paya’s place - busting ass through graduate school and just trying to keep her head screwed on tightly. Of course, Zelda has always been drawn to Paya for her similarity to herself - her high-strung preoccupation with everything; her quintessential Jewishness; her academic and personal interests in literature, D.C. life, and intersectional feminism; even the soft, high, almost dovish way in which they both speak. Zelda closes her office door and sits down at her desk, contemplating the most gentle and encouraging way to continue this conversation.

  
  


> **Zelda Silverstein  
>  ** Let’s take things one step at a time. Why do you want to drop out?
> 
> **Paya Shapiro  
>  ** It’s just hard to see the point anymore. i’ve talked to you about this before, and we’re both girls that have wanted to be academics since we were small. It’s just getting harder and harder to feel the same excitement for it all when it’s getting so hard and I’m getting so close to the end. i thought it would get easier - and in some ways it has - but sometimes i’m writing my dissertation and i sit back and realize this doesn’t make any sense! Nobody cares about salamanders! Salamander and dragon dissertations are so last century! Get with the program Paya!!! 
> 
> **Zelda Silverstein  
>  ** I assure you I care about salamander and dragon dissertations. I’m sure it’s wonderful, Paya - you shouldn’t be so hard on yourself! I do understand the fatigue though
> 
> Have you told your grandmother how you feel yet?
> 
> **Paya Shapiro  
>  ** So she and aunt purah can slaughter me? no thank you!!
> 
> **Zelda Silverstein  
>  ** They won’t slaughter you. They were young students working on their masters like you once too, though I suppose they weren’t in the middle of a pandemic with a new president and they didn’t have DIY hot yoga tutorials or Tinder to distract them
> 
> **Paya Shapiro  
>  ** Omg u haven’t told bubbe about my tinder escapades have you?? Please Zelda have mercy
> 
> **Zelda Silverstein  
>  ** Paya, why in the world would I tell your grandmother about your (very COVID-unsafe) dates with Capitol Hill interns and aspiring economic theorists who won’t even (excuse the euphemism) go downtown on you?
> 
> **Paya Shapiro  
>  ** I feel like that guy had a very valid reason for not wanting to perform cunnilingus, Zelda. he was 22 and he’d never put his face down there before!!
> 
> **Zelda Silverstein  
>  ** That’s even more of a reason to be unimpressed with him! Undergraduate males in the year 2021 just don’t not know how to go down on a woman. It’s disgraceful.

  
  


Zelda’s face is red. She plants her head atop her folded arms and exhales hard, shaking with silent laughter. Sometimes the exercise of talking to Paya verges on ridiculous, and she must launch into older sister mode without even realizing what she’s doing.

  
  


> **Zelda Silverstein  
>  ** Tell your bubbe how you’re feeling. Don’t drop out and move to some Latin American country because you’re burnt out. We’re all burnt out and we all deserve breaks and love, so give yourself a break and some love! Stop messing with the salamanders and eat a nice dinner, take a long bath, and go to bed early. You’ll wake up tomorrow feeling like a different person. 
> 
> **Paya Shapiro  
>  ** Zelda [pleading face emoji]
> 
> Ur literally the best friend a sensitive academic girl could ever have. idk what i’d do without you. I’m not sure if i’m gonna tell bubbe what’s going on immediately, but maybe over dinner on Shabbos?
> 
> Thank you thank you thank you [heart with arrow emoji]
> 
> How is Link btw? I havent seen them since they came out of their coma and i want to visit them so bad but i don’t want to overwhelm them haha
> 
> Are you taking good care of them? [smiling face with smiling eyes emoji]

At this mention of Link, Zelda’s anxiety spikes, her mind immediately going to them in Shaw where they’re wandering or napping or piecing their life together from text messages and old photographs. She immediately thinks to text them, wondering wherever and whatever they’re doing, but she reins this maternal urge in and just stays with Paya and her whole Georgetown life. She shoots off a text and then goes back to work, watching the midterms roll in and grading essay questions on as the hours slip by.

  
  


> **Zelda Silverstein  
>  ** Link is half of my life again and I can’t be happier or sadder about it! [face with tears of joy emoji] They’re doing okay. Every day is a new day for them. Our relationship isn’t the same but that’s completely understandable, right? But they’re okay. We’re okay.

Truthfully, Link is frustrated. In the morning, speaking in hushed tones a “good morning” or a “how did you sleep?” to Zelda, they are impossibly frustrated not being able to hear their own voice or Zelda’s responding, “morning” and “I slept fine, and you?” They are frustrated as they stroll through the neighborhood and are unable to catch the sounds of the birds singing and the bystanders chattering away on their smartphones, angry and flirtatious and so very ambitious. They are frustrated washing their hands, running lukewarm water into the bowl of the sink and being robbed of the luxury of listening to its clear song. They are frustrated missing out on Princess’ purr, or the rumble of a thunderstorm, or anything but the music they blast almost continuously into their ears.

On Wednesday, Link picks up Zelda’s sleek mahogany Fender Acoustasonic Telecaster and spreads it across their lap. Strumming the pads of their fingers across the strings, they feel its thunderous vibration and hear nothing, the sound too subtle for their damaged ears. Wordlessly, they put their face in their hands, ready to weep for their lost capability, though they barely recall a life when they ever had it. Princess comes to sit insistently in their lap, and Link supposes this makes up for their deafness for the moment - the lush, tactile feel of Princess’ short calico fur, the warmth of his small body radiating through the leg of Link’s sweatpants.

Link goes outside. They like the fire escape a lot, principally because it provides a titular “escape” from the sometimes oppressive environment of Zelda’s apartment full of memories. They also walk to Meridian Hill Park to sit by the fountain they cannot hear, stroll amongst the statues of Dante Alighieri and Jeanne D’Arc, and read books in the grass. They watch the children play tag and frisbee and stream videos on YouTube with A.I.-generated closed captioning, remarking internally on the inaccessibility of so much of the world. They skip pennies into the water, not knowing if they’ve made a wish or not. They put their ear to the bare Earth and listen for the gestational sounds of metals being formed, groundwater percolating, trees digging the infrastructure of their roots deep into the ground. They hear nothing but perhaps their own heartbeat.

By the end of March, it’s glaringly apparent that Link is at least a little depressed. Zelda watches Link zone out with their headphones on and stumble over a sign one too many times and on the last Sunday of the month just has it, is too tired of watching the person they love and care for on a daily basis suffer. Just before bedtime, before Link goes out onto the fire escape to smoke a joint sold to them by Zelda’s teenage neighbor across the hall, Zelda catches them in front of the television and says/signs, “We should get you a primary care doctor.”

Link has never fancied doctors or hospitals, so they pull a face some might call childish in response. They simply shake their head, hoping Zelda will simply go back to reading her book and letting them feel like a piece of shit.

No dice. Zelda shakes her head right back, just as stubborn as can be. “No, none of that,” she says, pouting a little so she looks just as much like a child as Link does. “My doctor is a good one, and she’s taking new patients. I know your insurance is kind of a mess right now, but I think you need to see someone. Soon. Maybe she can help with your hearing loss.”

Link cannot help but admit this to be true. They sigh and nod, turning back to  _ Frasier _ on the Hallmark Channel and reading the white closed captioning text off the bottom of the screen with something like defeat in their gut. They can’t bring themself to mind losing an argument to Zelda.

The hour of nine passes slowly into ten, the crescent moon moving like a sailor through the deep black-blue sky, the nighttime temperature sliding into the lower forties. Eventually, Zelda begins to nod off behind her book; Link gently jostles her awake and helps her out of her armchair, signing off with a quick  _ goodnight _ as she slips into her bedroom with lidded, tired eyes. Then it’s outside into the chilly March air, Link lighting up their hastily-wrapped, somewhat amateurish blunt and welcoming the onset of brain-massaging fingers, the head change and the warmth that accompanies every high, even from fair-to-middling weed obtained from an adolescent dealer. After the seven-minute smoke break, they unfold their sofa bed and play on their phone for the hours it takes them to drift off to sleep - reading the news and trying to get with the times; tracing the constellations they can perceive out of the window; finding recipes to try in the coming days; looking at all the pictures saved to their Google Drive, mostly of Zelda and the Georgetown Champions.

Oh, what a life. Oh what a month! 

In April, Zelda starts to piece together how life turned out for all of them in the interim since undergraduate. She comes to Link holding a shoebox absolutely stuffed full of letters in her characteristically thin, feminine handwriting, explaining in a quiet voice and with slow, careful signs that they cover the space between Link’s accident and their reawakening. 

“I used to write you a letter a week,” she says, almost embarrassed to admit the nature of their devotion, their single-minded desire for Link to wake up and get a little reading done. She puts the box down on the coffee table and leaves it closed, no rifling through the pretty blue and yellow stationary and seven years’ worth of change and unadulterated affection; shrugging a little, she adds, “I was going to give these to you right after you woke up, but I figured you’d want to get to know me and the world first, you know.”

Link puts their hands on the box, the minimalist DSW logo printed on the cardboard lid. For the next two weeks, they spend their days reading every letter (all of which, thank the Lord, have been meticulously stacked and ordered as they were written), learning more about the bright world they left behind and the dark mess of one they’ve newly come into.

The very first letter is a lot to swallow.

  
  


> _ Thursday, May 15, 2014 _
> 
> _ Dear Link,  _
> 
> _ I barely know how to begin. It’s unbelievable to think that last week, we were all graduating and walking on that big beautiful stage and our futures were laid out perfectly in front of us. You were here, in our house, in our bed, just as strong, flawless, smart, and capable as you ever were. Who would have thought that a car accident (with Dr. Ganon involved too, holy G-d) would have taken you away from me, from all of us, especially right after Mipha died last month? I really don’t know what to say. I miss you more than words can express. You and Georgetown and all of our plans for greatness - all of it was my life. What is my life now? _
> 
> _ I suppose I’m being selfish. It really isn’t about me. It’s about you. Dr. Miyamoto says that there’s about a fifty-percent chance you won’t ever come out of this and that they’re keeping you in the coma for the time being so that you can heal. I’m not a doctor so I don’t know anything about anything, but “fifty-percent” scares me. “Fifty-percent” is the perfect borderline between you’re coming back to me and you’re dead for the rest of your life. I wonder if you can hear me when I come to visit you. You’re probably tired of all the crying and the inane questions. Sometimes I kiss you goodbye and wonder if you could be like Sleeping Beauty and come to life simply through the power of my lips’ touch. One day I’ll read this letter to you and you will open your eyes as if it’s a magic spell - oh, how I wish I had that power! _
> 
> _ The house is so quiet now. The bed feels cold without you. I’m having a hard time sleeping alone now, and I guess I’ll sleep alone until you come back to life, even if that means I’ll sleep alone until the end. That’s depressing, isn’t it? Sorry, sorry - I’ll move on to other things. _
> 
> _ Daddy sends his love. All of us Champions have come to visit you at least twice, and you know I show up every day. Daruk just flew back home to Patagonia, but he’s coming back in August to write his first play - he says it’s going to be experimental, elegiac. He’s not feeling so great about the world since Mipha died and this happened to you. On the other hand, Revali is staying in DC for now to teach Camp Shakespeare to middle and high schoolers, and then when Daruk comes back he says they’re going to work together. Urbosa is going back to Morocco for a week to catch up with her folks, then coming back to start her PhD program in June - she’s really serious about this whole philosophy thing, I think much more than the acting and the dancing. I can’t help but feel like we’ve all broken since you and Mipha went away, and this is our lives now - us slowly migrating away from each other, things never the same. That’s growing up for you. I have to remember that we’re only 22! _
> 
> _ Anyway. I love you forever. I’ll come see you soon. _
> 
> _ \- Zelda _

  
  


Link swallows back the urge to cry at this very first missive. They place it face-down on the coffee table and move onto the next one with a sigh, trying to modulate their breathing.

One of their favorite letters is one from April 2016. By now they have progressed to reading with a huge mug of chai tea right after Zelda leaves for work; they read this 2016 letter and realize what it was like to live exactly four years ago in Zelda’s shoes, in a universe that grew progressively more uncaring and chaotic.

  
  


> _ Saturday, April 2, 2016 _
> 
> _ Dear Link,  _
> 
> _ Hello, my cherished one. I’ve been worried about you catching a cold lately, because they’ve been keeping your room so chilly as per new hospital policy or whatever, but Dr. Miyamoto assures me that people on propofol can’t catch colds. Still - I put a scarf around your neck, and it makes you look cute as your hair grows longer and longer. (I still comb it to get the tangles out.) _
> 
> _ Daruk and Revali are writing a play together (finally!). It’s called “Downtown in the District of Columbia,” which I think is kind of stuffy and doesn’t very well represent what the play is about. Do you want to guess what it’s about? Young urban professionals? Political science students? Restaurateurs? Nope - it’s about Mipha being a Muslim from Lebanon, living in DC and trying to learn, work, and fall in love. We’re all characters in it, of course, and you’re her love interest (because, well, you were her love interest, weren’t you?). I’m not sure if they’re going to include her death in the play; they’ve been sort of fighting about that, and you know how Daruk and Revali sometimes war like bitter enemies because Revali is such a sarcastic asshole. I love him, but he’s only nice to me because he respects me (idk if he respects Daruk when it comes to this play).  _
> 
> _ Oh how I wish you were here. It’s so strange to think about how you and Mipha went so close to each other - her in April, weeks before graduation, and you the week after graduation. You were still in such heavy mourning when you got hit by that car. Life is so bizarre and arbitrary and unfair. It seemed like when we were undergraduates, nothing would pull us apart. Now I come to see you in the hospital with tubes in your mouth, your eyes taped shut, and you always did have such an inscrutable face, but now it’s like you’re dead. Will it be one more year before you come back? Two years? Ten years? A lifetime? I have no clue. _
> 
> _ More about what’s going on in the world - election season is steamrolling ahead and it’s really starting to look like the horrible horrible man is going to be the Republican nominee. Daddy is running on the Democratic ticket despite being an Independent, and to tell you the truth, I don’t have any nails anymore. I’ve bitten them all off watching the news every night, this parade of insanity that I never thought would come to pass. Daddy is the strongest person I know but I don’t know if he can beat this populist prince. There is so much evil in this country, and it’s only getting worse. _
> 
> _ How will I do this without you? You were my best friend, my rock.  _
> 
> _ I’ll come see you next weekend. I love you so much - I’m not sure if I say it enough. _
> 
> _ \- Zelda _

  
  


Link finds another goodie from 2018, one that also very much captures the desolation of the time in general and in Zelda’s life in particular, when she was two years into her PhD program and feeling the burn big-time.

  
  


> _ Sunday, February 4, 2018 _
> 
> _ Dear Link,  _
> 
> _ I’ve done you a great wrong. I’m so sorry. Remember at the beginning of this horrible ordeal when I promised you I’d sleep alone for the rest of my life until you came back to me? Well… I’ve broken my promise. I’ve started to date again. It’s just, you see, I’ve been so lonely, and I’m in the middle of my PhD and it’s Hell, Link - capital H Hell. _
> 
> _ Idk if you remember, but my dissertation is the first four chapters of my book-in-progress about Holocaust literature by Jews and Romanis that escaped to the United States. I’ve been stuck neck-deep in memoirs, novels, heartbreak, and memory, which makes my sleep very nightmarish and me a very interesting if somewhat intense and depressing person to go on a date with. Can you imagine going on a date with me? “What do you do?” “Oh, I’m a Holocaust scholar. I read genocide literature on a daily basis!” _
> 
> _ Dating again is strange. Every kiss feels bizarre and stupid. Every touch is pale, unsatisfying, though I crave it because I so crave intimacy and togetherness, even if it’s not the same as it was with you. I’m afraid I’ll never be able to find a love after you, or at least someone who understands me the way you understood me - after years of hard work and conscious effort - and who knows. Maybe I’m doing all these poor academics and political wannabes a disservice holding onto you after you’ve been gone for four years, but I can’t bring myself to let you go. I still dream of you, your mysterious and androgynous face, and it’s such a relief from all the Holocaust nightmares, but I’m thinking maybe I’m tired of seeing you in my sleep too. I’d much rather see you in real life. _
> 
> _ I’m so burnt out, my sweet. I don’t know if I will ever not be tired, if I will have to wait until my forties to have that perfect moment of rejuvenation in my heart and my career and my love life. I hope you’ll be there with me then.  _
> 
> _ The federal government is still putting poor immigrant children in cages and it reminds me so much of all the things I’m reading all the time, all the Holocaust accounts, the fleeing and the systematic rounding up of all the undesirables. I’m so terrified of what’s coming next, and I’ve been signing petitions like crazy, calling the right people and sending long emails, but idk if I’m making a difference. Our president is being investigated by the feds and yet persists as our dear leader despite it all. Dating is reminding me of that terrible party in our sophomore year when that horrible upperclassman put his hand up my skirt, and you slept with me all through that weekend - wouldn’t let me out of your sight even for a moment - and I guess I’m just thinking about that obsessively every time some Tinder guy puts his hand on my neck or tries to kiss me in any way but chastely. There was a blood moon at the beginning of this year, which I believe was an omen for the way things are going to be from now on. All the monsters are coming out and I need your help, my knight - but where are you? _
> 
> _ Sleeping. I hope you’re sleeping well. _
> 
> _ I love you. I’ll come see you ASAP. _
> 
> _ \- Zelda _

  
  


By the last days of March, Link has gotten to the 2020 letters, which grow more and more poignant especially at the emergence of COVID.

  
  


> _ Sunday, March 1, 2020 _
> 
> _ Dear Link,  _
> 
> _ There’s something very scary happening in the world. Remember a few weeks ago, when I told you about this new virus that they say spread from China to the United States? It’s called coronavirus, and now it’s reaching pandemic levels. We’re in a quarantine - can you believe that? A modern-day pandemic, and we’re all cloistered in our houses with no idea what’s going on. The hospitals are filling up with sick bodies, and every day on the news the death toll rises. This thing is really awful and confusing - a flu that destroys your respiratory system and wreaks havoc on the other systems of the body, there are reports of strokes and heart attacks and everything! There are a lot of people who refuse to believe what’s going on and refuse to acknowledge what’s going on - our dear president is one of them, and so is Professor Ganon, believe it or not - but I can’t help but think this is all very serious, especially in urban epicenters like New York and DC. _
> 
> _ It’s terrifying, Link. I don’t know if you’re ever coming back, and with this pandemic and the way it’s pulled the whole world into a standstill, I don’t know if I can get through this without you. I haven’t even been to visit you for a couple of weeks (this is my second letter I haven’t hand-delivered) because it’s so dangerous to go to the hospitals at this time. I don’t know when the next time I’ll see your face will be. Of course you’re in the pictures and the dreams, but I’m afraid they’ll neglect you at the hospital with all the deeply sick people coming in. Oh G-d. I don’t know what to do. _
> 
> _ I’ve been quarantining with Urbosa for the past week. She came over last weekend to visit and have dinner and ended up staying the night because we talked way too late (slumber party late), and then the next morning we turned on the news and they were talking about lockdown and quarantine and we just figured she should stay with me until further notice. We’re all stocked up on food, lots of chicken cutlets and ground beef to make hamburgers and lasagna with. I’ve been letting Urbosa take up the cooking since she has her special Moroccan flavor that she adds to everything, and I’ve been in tastebud Heaven! There’s nothing to do but sit around and talk and watch inane movies on television. It’s the first time in a long time I’ve felt able to rest, though of course my anxiety is through the roof. Urbosa helps with that, though - she’s very much like a big sister in that way, nursing me through my panic attacks and sleeping in the same bed with me so I feel safer. Though I’m more depressed than I’ve been in years, she’s here, and it’s a blessing from above. _
> 
> _ I can’t help but think, though - I wish it were you I was quarantining with. Knowing you, you’d just nap the days away, you big sleepyhead. _
> 
> _ Come home, Link. Let things be the way they were one-hundred years ago, when we lived in a civil and magical land and we had nothing but each other. _
> 
> _ Daruk and Revali are safe. Revali tried to fly home to Hawaii but all the airports are tied up and closed due to lockdown. I’m worried about Daddy - election season is really rolling full steam ahead and he’s making grand promises and declarations about coronavirus and what needs to be done about it, but… I fear he may wear himself out soon, physically, financially, and emotionally. I can only hope if he doesn’t beat the president, he comes out alive and healthy. I hope we all do. _
> 
> _ I will see you as soon as possible, my dearest. I love you to pieces. _
> 
> _ \- Zelda _

  
  


Then it is April. Link has been even quieter than usual through their letter-reading period, consumed with the world depicted in all of Zelda’s missives and content for the moment not to ask too many questions. On the first Saturday of the month, though, they watch Zelda move through the kitchen in the morning - making her coffee, fiddling with her long blonde tresses as they are mussed and tangled with sleep - and Link waits until the moment when Zelda comes into the living room with her mug of coffee in her hands, comfy in her pajamas, to look her in the face and attempt to sign the question they have been most preoccupied with for the past two weeks -  _ were we together before? _

Zelda, addled with sleep and not thinking clearly before her first sip of java, gives him a look of confusion. “Sorry, I didn’t catch that. Come again?”

Already frustrated with the limitations of their disability, Link pronounces it in their stupid deaf voice: “Were we in love?”

Zelda’s expression, heretofore the impassive and receptive expression of one just recently come out of sleep, goes all round and soft in reply. With one hand free, she signs/says, “Yes. We were in love.”

Simultaneously satisfied and found wanting at this answer, Link is eager to talk about this like they haven’t been eager for anything in all the months they’ve been awake.  _ What happened with Mipha _ , they sign.

Zelda sits down on the sofa, setting her steaming mug down on a wooden coaster on the coffee table and releasing a sigh that Link sees though they do not hear it. They sit next to Zelda and watch her play with one of her braids left over from the night before. “Mipha was Muslim,” Zelda explains, talking slowly. “So she wanted a husband. She couldn’t just be with you in any informal way. She wanted to get married.”

Link slowly grasps this, wholly unfamiliar with the mechanics and details of modern dating in the Islamic world. They come and sit next to Zelda, and they want so badly to touch the slightly frizzy, always beautiful mess of her flaxen-almost golden hair. Reining themself in, they sign,  _ but we were in love _ .

“Yes,” comes Zelda’s simple reply. 

Link thinks for a moment of every day of their new life, Zelda occupying each one as their protector, caretaker, translator, and friend. They sign,  _ are we still in love _ .

Sipping from her coffee in the moment in which the question comes, Zelda laughs, threatening to spit hazelnut goodness in a comic stream across the coffee table. She composes herself after an instant of laughter, shaking her head and saying, “I have no idea, Link. I love you dearly and I always will, but how you feel is your own business.”

Link considers this - how they feel. They know they care a lot about Zelda and love her almost instinctively, the way someone loves the person that cares for them and saves their life daily (not quite how you love a mother, but something similar to that). They’re not altogether sure if they’re in love with her, though, and this frustrates them beyond measure.

“It’s okay, Link,” Zelda is saying, however, putting her hand on theirs and rubbing it with affection. “We can take our time.”

This - this time - is a blessing. Link reasons that they have nothing but infinite time now that they’re awake and alive - nothing but years to get to know Zelda and maybe rediscover the love they had for her once upon a time, if not something better - and this is okay. This makes sense. Link takes a sip from Zelda’s coffee, finds it a bit too hot, and sticks their tongue out in distaste. Zelda just smiles at them, and they move on with their Saturday morning with a new understanding between them, something they didn’t have before as just accidentally-on-purpose roommates, soulmates - whatever you want to call them.

As a surprise for Zelda - in celebration or in honor of this newfound past love of theirs, because they feel sentimental - Link assembles the ingredients in her kitchen to make ratatouille. It takes about three and a half hours of their Tuesday afternoon, while Zelda toils away at her book and in front of her webcam at Georgetown; Link thinks to themself, as they roast zucchini and squash drizzled with olive oil; heat eggplant, garlic, bay leaf, bell peppers, tomatoes, thyme, and basil on medium heat on the stovetop; and pour all the veggies and cheese into a casserole dish which they summarily pop into the oven for forty-five minutes - they think that this has to be worth it, it has to be worth it to try to achieve their former greatness. They were never destined to be Link Jepson, the weird autistic kid with dirt on their face in Montpelier. They were going to fall in love and eat good food in the nation’s capital.

Zelda smells the food before she sees it. Coming into the apartment with all her bags slung across her shoulders and back, she calls out - knowing Link probably won’t be able to hear her - “I smell dinner! What is this goodness?”

Link materializes in front of her in an old T-shirt and capri pants Zelda recently bought for them from Anthropologie, reasoning they need a Spring wardrobe that won’t fall off of them without the aid of a belt. They take Zelda’s hands and lead her into the kitchen, to the stove, where the beautiful ratatouille sits in the casserole dish, untouched and steaming. Zelda jumps up and down.

“Oh my!” she cries, just stopping short of taking the Lord’s name in vain. She looks up at Link - at their eyes’ delicate hipocanthic folds, their gender-ambiguous face and their gently happy expression - and, with her cheeks flushed and a smile spreading between them, asks/signs, “Did you do this for me?”

Link nods.  _ Of course _ , they sign.

Zelda’s smile is a winner. For the first time since Link’s reawakening, she puts her arms around them - caressing their shoulder blades with her hands, feeling the steady throb of heat from their body as it presses against hers - and Link idly wonders if this is a step in the right direction as their momentarily tuck their chin in against Zelda’s crown, folding their arms around her in turn. Within minutes, Zelda’s bags are on the floor in a heap by the front door and they are digging into their dinner, Zelda humming and moaning with delight all the while.

“Very good,” she signs/says, giving Link the  _ OK _ sign as a punctuation mark.

With the arrival of the new month comes Link’s appointment with Zelda’s primary care physician. Link sits in the waiting room of Fay Cotera, MD with their favorite of Zelda’s masks pulled across their face and their cellphone held tight in their hands. They have no clue as to what their personal health history is, their genetic predisposition to dying early of what? - Unluckiness? Vague pneumococcal coughs? - so filling out the questionnaire the receptionist gives to them proves thorny and frustrating, especially when the questions veer to Link’s mental state. “Do you often feel guilt?” “Do you have a hard time waking up in the mornings?” “Would you describe yourself as depressed?” Eventually, Link gives up the exercise entirely and draws Princess’ face on the top of the questionnaire, then hands it back to the receptionist and goes back to sit and wait for Dr. Cotera to see them. This is why they dreaded this appointment in the first place.

Dr. Cotera is a giantess of a woman, busty and blonde and well over six feet tall. Though Link is by no means a short person, they feel absolutely dwarved in her presence - especially when she comes into the exam room in her hot pink blouse and medical-grade face mask, her towering over where they sit on the little examination table. 

“Link Jepson!” Cotera pronounces in a Latin American accent, smiling with her eyes. She holds out one manicured hand to shake as another woman scuttles into the room behind her. Link is confused for a moment, but promptly understands when the silent woman begins to sign at them as Cotera speaks.

“My name is Dr. Cotera,” she says as they shake hands. “You must be my coma patient. Seven years is a long time!”

_ Yeah _ , Link signs, feeling taciturn.

“Well, then.” Cotera sits down on the stool across from the examination table, a clipboard in her lap and a pen in her hand. “Let’s get you checked out, yes?”

She reviews the file she got from the hospital, which is surprisingly thorough and includes things all the way from their days in Montpelier. Arthritis runs in their family. They have an allergy to amoxicillin and had the chickenpox when they were four. Cotera marks all of this down to later put in a computer somewhere, then begins to give Link a complete physical and test their vision and hearing. 

“Definitely impaired,” she comments as they finish up the hearing exam, all the beeping Link can and cannot hear. She gives them a sympathetic smile as they remove the clunky headphones. “You may want to see an ear, nose, and throat doctor. Remind me to refer you to a specialist - they can figure out exactly what happened to you and whether or not it’s reversible.”

All the information is dizzying to Link, but they nod, somewhat grateful.

“Now.” Cotera turns the full blast of her loving attention on Link, her so intense it is almost hard to pay attention to the interpreter as well. “Some of your answers on the wellness questionnaire concerned me. Are you feeling depressed, Link?”

Link wants to answer at length. They want to explain the full breadth and depth of their sorrow, the bone-deep exhaustion and the frustration and the sadness that permeates every day, them grieving a life they can never recover. They don’t feel comfortable, though, so they just nod and sign,  _ very much _ .

Cotera frowns behind her mask. “Have you spoken to a therapist?”

_ I havent spoken to anyone _ , Link signs.

The frown intensifies. Cotera glances down at Link’s chart for a moment, torn with indecision, then fills with resolve and says, “I’m prescribing you a light antidepressant to start and referring you to a therapist along with the ENT. We’re going to take care of you.”

Link leaves with a prescription for 25 milligrams of Lexapro, a follow-up appointment in three months, and a feeling of increased motivation within them. They listen to Ritchie Valens on the bus ride home, then come into Zelda’s apartment dreamy and timeless, suddenly a little optimistic for the coming weeks.

Lexapro brightens the days. The typical downward spiral of depression eventually ceases to hit quite so hard and Link finds themself not dreading the morning when it comes or ruminating endlessly on their deficits at sleeptime. They take less naps. They’ve always been a sleepyhead, according to Zelda, but after Lexapro and this newfound understanding between them and Zelda and the rest of the world, it seems like sleeping has become so much less of a necessity. They eat their breakfast with Zelda and spend their day in the parks and bars of Shaw, do meal prep in the early afternoon, cook dinner on the evenings when Zelda isn’t too tired to do anything but order in, and life feels good.

At the end of the month, Princess stops eating. Link notices it on Wednesday the 28th, when they pour out the cat’s midday meal into the little stainless steel bowl in the kitchen. Where Princess is usually voracious in his hunger, immediately springing from some overhead corner of the house to Link’s feet to chow down on their dry or wet food, today Princess comes slowly to his bowl, takes one bite of the kibble, and then slinks away. Link immediately texts Zelda.

  
  


> **Link Jepson  
>  ** princess isnt eating!! [worried face emoji] he just kind of took one bite and then walked away and idk what to do
> 
> you know he’s usually gobbling it up
> 
> **Zelda Silverstein  
>  ** Oh dear. Can you just watch him? I want to see how he feels when I get home.
> 
> Thank you for letting me know.

Link hovers around the cat for the hours it takes for Zelda to get through her Georgetown shift and come home. Princess sits in their lap and sleeps, oblivious to the temporary conflict he has caused in the world. When Zelda arrives home at 6:00, her hair in two French braids down her head and her face fixed in an expression of deep worry, she does more of the same hovering over and around Princess, pronouncing his name in the high and babyish voice she uses for him alone.

“Princess, my big boy.” She pads after him into the kitchen, to his food bowl, where he simply puts his bushy orange face down. “Princess, are you hungry? Princess, why won’t you eat?”

Zelda sleeps fitfully tonight. Link can tell because she goes back and forth between her bedroom and the bathroom during the night’s wee hours, sighing and peeking into the living room, where Princess sleeps at the foot of the fold-out bed. At three in the morning, Link sits up and signs to Zelda in the dark,  _ r u ok? _ .

Zelda smiles sadly and signs/says back, “I’m sorry. I’m going to bed.”

After Princess’ strange behavior continues into Thursday and then into Friday, they spend early Friday afternoon in the KwikVet on 10th Street, getting their poor cat checked out. Princess meows miserably as the veterinarian examines his mouth with nimble, gloved fingers; swiftly locating the problem, the Indian-American vet looks at Zelda and Link across the metallic examination table and chirps, “Not to worry! Your kitty has a toothache that has abscessed.”

Zelda gives Link a momentary look, her brow furrowed with concern and her green eyes still a little watery from her cry in the waiting room. “That sounds bad,” she says.

“It really isn’t,” the veterinarian replies with an easy, lipstuck smile. “All we have to do is drain the abscess and give Princess here a few pain meds to go home with.”

Link and Zelda watch, alternately fascinated and disgusted, as pus pours out of a hidden pocket in Princess’ mouth. They carry the cat sedated and happy back home to the apartment above the café, and Zelda cuddles her dear Princess on the sofa while Link makes her a cup of chai tea.

Over tea, Link asks,  _ why princess _ .

Zelda smiles and laughs - this her first laugh in several days. “I thought he was a girl at first.”

Link pets the drugged up cat on Zelda’s lap and sips sweet chai and milk. They want Zelda to tell them a story, so they sign,  _ story? _

Zelda is more than happy to oblige.

“Remember that time when we were freshmen walking through Georgetown Waterfront Park and you peeled tangerines for me to eat, but you ended up eating half of them anyway (because you always were kind of a glutton)? I didn’t mind, though. I thought you were so freaking cute. And then we found a human tooth - an actual human tooth! - on 31st Street when we were getting takeout from Charcoal Town that one Thursday. That shawarma was so good, and you’d never had Greek food or smoked hookah in your life (and to tell you the truth, neither had I!), but then you kept the human tooth in your box of weird-slash-pretty things - your lapis lazulis and your amber and your action figures. I loved that part of your room. You had a room like a cave, with a roommate that was so obnoxious and mean to you, but somehow you made things home with all of your blankets and your boxes full of cool things - like teeth! We took pictures of our teeth. We wanted to do an art piece about them, but instead the pictures just rotted in my Google Drive for the next four years, and then you were gone. That was a funny time - I wish you could remember it.

“Hey, remember that time when we joined the Georgetown Champions? We were just looking for something to do on campus besides hole up in our rooms or walk in the park to do homework, so we looked around and we looked around and we found these flyers for this new theatre troupe that was holding auditions in the Davis Center, looking for ‘fresh and inexperienced faces.’ I was a theatre kid from high school onward, had done Camp Shakespeare from the time I was a sophomore, but you had never done theatre or anything like that, even though you said you were, quote, ‘really into Noh’. You showed me really cool YouTube videos of Japanese theatre. I’ll have to pull them up for you. Anyway - we walked into the auditorium and there they were - Daruk, Revali, and Urbosa, all upperclassmen. They were handing out numbers and getting people to line up on the stage and do their auditions one-by-one. I did ‘Out, damn spot!’ from  _ Macbeth _ and got a round of applause from Urbosa and Daruk - not Revali, who was always, always such an asshole. You performed a poem you’d written yourself in Abenaki and played an ocarina, which I think really impressed Urbosa. A bunch of other students performed - monologues and skits and sometimes musical numbers from  _ Grease  _ and  _ Wicked _ \- and then Mipha came on stage in one of her gorgeous red hijabs she always wore and performed this beautiful monologue from  _ A Raisin in the Sun _ , and it was so perfect, so simple and true, coming from another freshman like us. We wanted to know her immediately. The next week they all sent us emails letting us know we’d made the cut, and we met at the Midnight Mug the next week to have coffee and formally introduce ourselves - the two of us, Mipha, Urbosa, Daruk, and Revali. The Georgetown Champions. I wish you could remember that time.

“Hey, remember how Mipha fell in love with you immediately? That first night at the Midnight Mug, she was so obviously smitten with you. She kept looking at you, and every time you spoke, she was sucked into you like you were the most interesting person in the world even though you were talking about banana nut bread recipes and your favorite songs to play on ocarina and ukulele. Later she told me that she felt like she had known you since you were kids, even though she was a Muslim from a big family in Beirut and you were an only child from suburban Vermont. You couldn’t have been more different, but somehow the two of you fit together. Sometimes I was jealous - I felt like you two were more compatible than we were, because she was so artistic and sweet and soft, an Aquarius which meant the two of you were both air signs, and she wanted to take things slow, and you needed to take things slow, and I was just so stubborn and opinionated, ugh, I’m rambling. You two used to have tea in her dorm room. She had this little hot plate and a kettle and she would make you big cups of cardamom tea, and the two of you would watch anime and play songs together. She was really romantic for you, Link. We used to go out to eat, to Flavio and Chez Billy Sud, and in the bathroom while we passed tampons back and forth and redid our makeup, she’d tell me, ‘I want to show them my hair.’ That was such a big thing to her. There are so many pictures of her and of the two of you lost forever on her Google Drive somewhere, locked behind a password. I’m sure they were all beautiful. I wish you could remember them.

“Hey, remember that first Hanukkah you spent with me? Your parents were both dead by the time you were seventeen so you had no family to go back to for Christmas break, and I just couldn’t stand the idea of you spending the holidays alone in your dorm room or in a hostel somewhere in D.C., so I took you back to Daddy’s house and we did Hanukkah together. I showed you how to make latkes and you, of course, ate them right up. We lit the menorah and played dreidel and Daddy gave you all his good Hanukkah gelt because he really liked you, right from the start. We ate sufganiyot from the Jewish bakery in Woodley Park - they’re these beautiful, jelly-filled doughnuts dusted with powdered sugar. Ah, this Hanukkah we’ll have to get some more! Jews don’t really give gifts for Hanukkah, but I wanted to do something special and holiday-neutral for you since you were raised celebrating Christmas. I gave you one of my mother’s old earrings. A gold dangling thing, shaped like a diamond with all these triangular details on it. You told me you hadn’t gotten a proper Christmas present in four years, and we hugged for the first time that night. You smelled so good - like lavender, I think it was your shampoo, and the snow we had played in earlier that day. I think about that Hanukkah all the time. I wish you could remember it.

“Hey remember the Shapiros? They’re this family of mostly-women academics that have been teaching and studying at Georgetown since the 1920s, and we were taught by two of them - Dr. Impa Shapiro, the English chair and our creative writing professor, and Dr. Purah Shapiro, Impa’s younger sister and our literature professor. Her area of expertise was postcolonial and American literature, which coincidentally overlapped with our interests as well! We spent so many hours in Impa and Purah’s offices, just talking about books and writing and publishing and Jewish stuff. Dr. Impa with her funny hats and Dr. Purah with her hair dyed strange colors. We were their best students, they used to say. I was such a tryhard academic even from the beginning, oy. You were much more chill and I think you were a happier student than I was because of it. Oh! And then there was Paya Shapiro, Impa’s granddaughter. She started going to Georgetown when we were juniors, and we used to get study rooms or go to Midnight Mug in Lauinger Library to cram for exams and watch French movies. Paya asked about you awhile ago - she wants to see you again, but she's afraid of overwhelming you while you’re still figuring everything out. She told me one of her favorite memories of you was dragging you to temple with me and Impa and Purah and then us all going out for lox afterward, which was so tasty. I wish you could remember that day.

“Hey, remember _Romeo and Juliet?_ That was the first major production we did with the Champions in Spring 2012, and of course I was Juliet and you were Romeo, haha. You also worked double-time as the dramaturge, and the two of us would only read Shakespeare to the exclusion of all but our schoolwork, and we decided for the play to kiss anywhere except the mouth. We got really creative! Butterfly kisses and kisses on the nose and kisses on the elbow and little nuzzles with our faces. Mipha was Benvolio. Oh, she was so cute! Revali as the perfect Tybalt, Urbosa directing and playing Mercutio, Daruk as the Friar. We premiered to a really small house, but we got rave reviews in one of the student publications and suddenly a whole chunk of the Georgetown student body knew who we were. That’s how we met Dr. Ganon. He was a theatre professor, a playwright, and a professional actor in D.C. He was always kind of weird with us. He praised our productions and gave us the most useless so-called constructive criticism, and sometimes it seemed like he was kind of obsessed with us. Popping in on our rehearsals. The unsolicited advice and the free tickets to his one-man show he called _Calamity_. It was actually pretty compelling, Link. Oh, how I wish you could remember it.

“Hey, remember that time when I decided to smoke Parliaments like Revali?

“Hey, do you remember that time when I decided to smoke Marlboros like Urbosa?

“Hey, remember that time when you and I got really high together for the first time and I was afraid it was possible to overdose on cannabis? That was funny-

“Hey, remember that picnic we all went on at the end of our freshman year? We all piled into Daruk’s Trailblazer and went to Whole Foods to get artisan cheeses and crackers and grapes, a nice big bottle of wine and some grapefruit-flavored IPAs that Revali wanted to try, a tray of finger sandwiches, some hummus and pita chips. Mipha had this really beautiful, huge blanket from Lebanon with fish and ancient Turkish pirate ships on it that we used to sit on; her father gave that to me after she died, it’s tucked somewhere in the linen closet, I’m sure I can pull it out for you if you want to see it later. We went to Hains Point right on the Potomac River. Watched the ships go by and all the cyclists riding in packs of fives and tens. It was late afternoon so we got to watch the sun set on the river - beautiful streaks of golden light in all the blue - and we were happy and drunk on Moscato and that disgusting beer Revali begged us and begged us to buy. I laughed so much, and so did Urbosa, and you and Mipha were talking to us about the dark web and how to access it and like, snuff films and red rooms and horrible stuff like that, haha. Eventually it started raining, and we all ran back to the car and laughed and cried a little. I don’t know why we were crying; it’s like after months of stagecraft and drinking in our dorm rooms and finding ourselves and one another, we realized that we were doing something special. That we were, in essence, just college students being college students, but we were also experiencing something incredibly profound with one another. Then next week, the two of us moved into an apartment with parquet flooring on Q Street, and we spent every night for three nights unpacking and buying furniture off of Craigslist. The sofa you sleep on every night is something we bought during that time. I wish you could remember that.”

By the time Zelda is done telling stories, it is three in the morning and Link is swimming in nostalgia for a life they never lived. Princess kneads their lap with his paws and Zelda is yawning and looking oh so tired and oh so sad. For the first time, Link knows what it feels like to want to kiss someone - not out of any romantic or sexual desire, nothing but simple yearning for one person’s touch, for the soft feel of a mouth against their own. They tuck this craving away and instead turn to Zelda and sign,  _ u should go to bed _ .

Zelda glances at her watch and laughs. “I think you’re right, Link. I’ve talked far too much tonight.”

Link shakes their head.  _ Never _ , they sign. 

Zelda helps them unfold the bed and arrange their blankets and pillows in their most pleasing formation. She hugs them goodnight and pads off down the hallway, undoing one of her braids and humming softly as she goes. Link watches her disappear into the bathroom with the strangest of feelings in their center. Pulling their own hair back into a ponytail, they shuck their pants off, turn off all the lights, and get underneath the covers with the purring orange mass that is Princess. 

It is almost May and there is so much left to recover. It is almost May and there is so much time left to recover it.


End file.
